Awareness
"Students demonstrate the ability to speak/write/think about real-world problems." (Johns Hopkins, n.d.).
Table of Contents
Introduction
In my classes, I work to build my students' ability to "speak/write/think about real-world problems" (Johns Hopkins, n.d.). Because I have students from all over the world, I leverage their diversity when discussing different perspectives on national and global issues. My goal is for them to think “intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes” (The Education Alliance, Brown University, 2008, p. 3). As I teach Spanish, the topics that we discuss in class often center around Spanish and Latin American history, geography, and immigration. My students have differing perspectives, some are recent immigrants, some have family members that are immigrants, and some have families that have been in the US for centuries. Many of the recent immigrants and those with immigrant family members come from Latin America and the Caribbean. This makes the topics we discuss in class very relevant to them.
I make sure to include cultural and historical lessons, as well as lessons on current events.
The students watch a Spanish video.
Historical Awareness
On top of teaching the Spanish language, I want my students to leave my class with a greater historical perspective than when they entered. Spanish-speaking countries are rich with history, and this history plays a major factor in the current events that surround Latin America and the Caribbean. I want my students to be able to use their perspective on history when such discussions arise. I firmly believe that we cannot move forward and significantly improve the conditions of marginalized groups until the population is educated and are persuaded. Every movement needs to have allies to succeed. Unfortunately many Americans are seriously misinformed about the world and even their own country. This leads to people being easily persuaded into opposing policies and movements that would benefit them and others around them. By giving my students the tools to discuss history and explain the reasons why certain issues exist, my goal is for my students to bring awareness to national and global history that slowly changes others' perspectives and leads to positive change. Below are some examples of lessons that I teach my students.
Crash Course History: The Spanish Empire
Student Summary Sample
In the video above, the students watched a brief overview of Spanish colonization and exploitation of Latin America. This is an important factor to keep in mind when we discuss current events that affect the region and people from that region. Colonization and continuing intervention play major factors in why we see caravans and mass migration from south of our border, as well as in other regions of the world. Learning more about the reasons for current issues can provide students with the arguments to inform others with limited understandings of why these events are happening. I had the students write a summary of what they learned in the video and discussion. Underneath the video is a student sample. The students wrote about how there were different indigenous peoples living in the Americas before the Spanish arrived and colonized the region. The Spanish gained a huge amount of material wealth off of the suffering of the indigenous population. The consequences of the colonization include Spanish being spoken and many people being of European and indigenous descent all throughout the Americas. It is also a major reason why Latin American people have struggled to gain independence from colonizing and interfering nations, such as Spain and the United States. Many of the students echoed similar thoughts in their writings and our discussion. Some of the students were surprised of the origins by Spanish in the Americas, as they had never learned the reasons why before. Many students saw similarities between the Spanish and the English, French and Portuguese in the Americas. It is important to highlight this history to students, especially in a Spanish classroom. I was never taught this history in a single Spanish or History class until college. On top of that, my only real lessons on Latin America in general were about Christopher Columbus, and they were cast in a positive light. Omitting this history and whitewashing colonization can be detrimental, as it causes our population to lose context on the current problems of entire nations and blame the inhabitants of those nations for the problems they have. It can lead to nationalist and xenophobic movements that stereotype immigrants because followers of these movements have little knowledge of the history of the United States and other countries.
The Motorcycle Diaries
The Motorcycle Diaries (photo above) is another movie that brings an important perspective to a historical figure, as well as sheds light on the effects of colonization and imperialism. During this film, the students were not only able to see many different landscapes of Argentina, Chile and Peru, but we had discussions about poverty around the world and the underlying causes. It also shed a completely different light on Che Guevara than what we normally learn (if at all) about him and Latin American revolutionaries. In the movie, a young Ernesto "Che" Guevara takes a break from Medical School in the 1950s to travel around South America with his friend on a motorcycle. The journey starts off lighthearted but takes a more serious turn when the two start to see the extreme poverty of indigenous people throughout the continent. They witness communities of people getting kicked off the same land that originally belonged to their ancestors. The goal of film is to challenge the students' world views. Most of the students had never heard of Che before watching this movie, and it provided us an opportunity to talk about Latin American history, imperialism, revolutionaries, global poverty, and the pertinence they have on discussions and events today. My goal was for the students to receive a different perspective on Latin American history than what we normally learn about it. This is important because like I mentioned above, a lack of understanding of history leads to xenophobic and nationalist movements here in the United States that support interventions (economic or militaristic) in developing nations that lead to more suffering for the majority of people in these countries. Then when people flee these nations and try to head to the United States for safety or opportunity, these nationalist movements blame the migrants for their own suffering. By learning more about the history of Latin American nations, my students can continue to bring a more wholesome opinion on this region of the country. Below are guides to the movie that the students filled out.
Student Sample #1
Student Sample #2
Below we watched and discussed important events in the movie, such as a mining company kicking indigenous people off their land and leaving them homeless. We also talked about the Incan empire and its legacy, such as Machu Picchu. This led to discussions about indigenous people throughout all the Americas being kicked off their land, as well as current problems with gentrification and housing insecurity that many of my students face.
Student Samples
Immigration
Immigration is a topic that is very familiar to my students and my school. The student population is made up of many different immigrant groups — from the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Multiple languages are spoken throughout the hallways and classrooms, with Spanish and Portuguese the most spoken. The largest groups of immigrants come from the Caribbean and Latin America. 40.6% of students are Hispanic/Latino, and 12.6% of students at the school are English Language Learners. This is also represented in Bridgeport's population, being one of the cities in Connecticut with the highest number of foreign-born residents. A big part of this is likely the proximity to New York City. In the neighborhood around the school, there are numerous restaurants and stores in Spanish and Portuguese. On the ride to the school, many undocumented workers can be seen waiting to be picked up for work for the day. I say all this to paint a picture that immigration plays a role in all of our students' and educators' lives. Below is a picture of the foreign-born population as a share in Connecticut. It is from 2000, so it has likely changed over the last two decades.
Foreign-Born Population in Connecticut (2000)
To highlight the difficulties that immigrants — specifically undocumented immigrants — face in this country, I showed the movie La misma luna (Under the Same Moon) in my class. The movie centers around two stories — that of a mother and a son. The mother, who is undocumented, lives in California and works multiple jobs to send money back to her son in Mexico. Her son, Carlitos, leaves Mexico after his grandmother, who was taking care of him, passes away. Throughout the movie, the audience witnesses various injustices and dangers that undocumented immigrants often face — such as garnishing of wages, work environment safety issues, risks of deportation, and abuse, among others. My students were very invested in the movie, and we spent time discussing it and its takeaways.
Throughout the movie, I had the students fill out a movie guide to ensure that they were paying attention and taking away important lessons. We discussed wage garnishment, exploitation, unsafe working conditions, difficulties not understanding the language, among many topics. Some of the students related to the movie, having immigrated to the US themselves. Some students had family members in other countries and understood the struggle of living far away from one's family. My hope from these lessons was for students to relate to the characters and gain new perspectives regarding immigration and undocumented immigration. Comprehensive immigration reform is unlikely without enough of a shift in public opinion. Many of the arguments are based out of ignorance, so it is good to have many voices that can dispel these misconceptions. Below are the guides that the students filled out.
Student Sample #1
Student Sample #2
Below we watched and discussed how Carlitos's mother worked multiple jobs in California to send money back to her mother and son. This led us to talk about remittance and the process of sending money to individuals and family members in other countries. We also talked about taxes and the misconceptions that undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes. Undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes and often pay into social benefits that they will never receive. For example, if an undocumented worker has a fake social security number, they still must pay taxes on that number.
Student Sample
In the movie, we saw many examples of undocumented workers being exploited. One example (below) includes Carlitos's mother, Rosario, and the house that she cleans. The owner of the house fires her and refuses to pay her for the last week of work that she did. She has no way to complain or seek help, as she cannot call the police. She would risk deportation. This led to a discussion on the exploitation of undocumented workers in the United States. We talked about workers being paid less than minimum wage or having their wages garnished. The workers have little that they can do to seek justice, as they would risk being deported. We also talked about a number of dangers that undocumented workers face in the US. In the movie, there was a scene where workers were working with plants and dangerous chemicals without using masks or gloves. There it shows workers getting chemicals in their eyes and cutting themselves on the plants. At that moment, immigration officials show up and arrest most of the workers, as a few of the workers escape. This led to the class talking about certain protections that we take for granted at the workplace, such as on-time paychecks and safe working conditions.
Student Samples
At the end of the movie, we discussed if Rosario's sacrifice (and others like her) was worth it. Most of the students said that it was a tough decision, but most thought that she made the right choice in coming to the United States to send money back home and that it was worth it. This was an important topic to discuss, as so often at a national dialogue, undocumented immigrants are seen as monolith and not for the humans that they are. Movies like this one are great ways for people to empathize and see the humanity in those that cross the border for safety or opportunity. On top of this, undocumented immigration is a topic familiar with some of my students, and they were very invested in the movie. It was uplifting to see the support that all my classes had for those that come to the US in search of a better life. The students left with a much-better perspective on undocumented immigration and new ways to discuss the topic with friends and family members. The goal is that they can persuade others and slowly change the national dialogue. My hope is that discrimination based on the country one was born will be looked back on by future generations with the same embarrassment that we look back at the Jim Crow era.
Student Samples
Conclusion
Throughout the different lessons we had on immigration and history, the students were invested in the material. They often expressed shock and curiosity when confronted with events in Latin American history, and many of them resonated with the lessons on immigration. By educating my students on the history and geography of Spanish-speaking countries, as well as current issues and how they relate to each other, my goal is for them to "speak/write/think about real-world problems" (Johns Hopkins, n.d.). This way they can think critically about current issues and topics and in turn educate their friends, family and others. The US population largely does not know much about Colonialism and US intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is important to get differing perspectives to shift the national dialogue. To enact progressive change, like serious immigration reform and pathways to citizenship, there needs to be a large movement pushing it. I will leverage my students' diversity in origins, language, and experiences to create an educational atmosphere where the students can grow as agents of change.
References:
ACTFL. (2012). ACTFL PROFICIENCY GUIDELINES 2012. Retrieved October 5, 2019, from https://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012.
Capps, R., Fortuny, K., Cook, A., Henderson, E., & Zuckerman, S. (2005, November). Immigrants in Connecticut: Labor Market Experiences and Health Care Access. The Urban Institute. Retrieved March 1, 2020, from https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/51746/311256-Immigrants-in-Connecticut.PDF
The Education Alliance, Brown University. (2008). Culturally responsive teaching. Retrieved from http://www.brown.edu/academics/education-alliance/sites/brown.edu.academics.education-alliance/files/uploads/KLOOM_crt_entire.pdf